Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute games and related media online, from small independent developers to larger software houses.

Native Steam on Linux

Because the Steam client is a 32-bit application, you will need to enable the multilib repository if you have a 64-bit system. It may also make sense to install multilib-devel to provide some important multilib libraries. You also most likely need to install the 32-bit version of your graphics driver to run Steam.

Several games have dependencies which may be missing from your system. If a game fails to launch (often without error messages) then make sure all of the libraries listed in Steam/Game-specific troubleshooting are installed.

Troubleshooting

Note:

In addition to being documented here, any bug/fix/error should be, if not already, reported on Valve's bug tracker on their GitHub page.

Connection problems may occur when using DD-WRT with peer-to-peer traffic filtering.

GUI problems with KDE

If you are using KDE and you have problems with the GUI (such as lag or random crashes), in KDE system settings, go to Workspace Appearance and Behaviour > Desktop Effects > Advanced. Change "Compositing type" from "XRender" to "OpenGL".

The close button only minimizes the window

To close the Steam window (and remove it from the taskbar) when you press x, but keep Steam running in the tray, set the environment variable STEAM_FRAME_FORCE_CLOSE to 1. You can do this by launching Steam using the following command.

Steam complains about direct rendering not available on 64bit systems with NVIDIA driver

Steam, being a 32-bit application, requires 32-bit nvidia GL libraries to run. This packages will install the proper 32-bit libGl libraries and symlinks in /usr/lib32 and will replace any existing mesa equivalent symlinks.

Launching games with custom commands, such as Bumblebee/Primus

Steam has fortunately added support for launching games using your own custom command. To do so, navigate to the Library page, right click on the selected game, click Properties, and Set Launch Options. Steam replaces the tag %command% with the command it actually wishes to run. For example, to launch Team Fortress 2 with primusrun and at resolution 1920x1080, you would enter:

primusrun %command% -w 1920 -h 1080

If you are running the Linux-ck kernel, you may have some success in reducing overall latencies and improving performance by launching the game in SCHED_ISO (low latency, avoid choking CPU) via schedtool

# schedtool -I -e %command% other arguments

Killing standalone compositors when launching games

Further to this, utilising the %command% switch, you can kill standalone compositors (such as Xcompmgr or Compton) - which can cause lag and tearing in some games on some systems - and relaunch them after the game ends by adding the following to your game's launch options.

killall compton && %command% && nohup compton &

Replace compton in the above command with whatever your compositor is. You can also add -options to %command% or compton, of course.

Steam will latch on to any processes launched after %command% and your Steam status will show as in game. So in this example, we run the compositor through nohup so it is not attached to Steam (it will keep running if you close Steam) and follow it with an ampersand so that the line of commands ends, clearing your Steam status.

Skins for Steam

The Steam interface can be fully customized by copying its various interface files in its skins directory and modifying them.

Steam skin manager

The process of applying a skin to Steam can be greatly simplified using steam-skin-managerAUR from the AUR. The package also comes with a hacked version of the Steam launcher which allows the window manager to draw its borders on the Steam window.

As a result, skins for Steam will come in two flavors, one with and one without window buttons. The skin manager will prompt you whether you use the hacked version or not, and will automatically apply the theme corresponding to your GTK+ theme if it is found. You can of course still apply another skin if you want.

The package ships with two themes for the default Ubuntu themes, Ambiance and Radiance. A Faience theme is under development and already has its own package on the AUR steam-skin-faience-gitAUR.

Using a pre-existing Steam install

If you have a shared drive with Windows, or already have a Steam installation somewhere else, you can simply symlink the Steam directory to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/ . However, be sure to do all the previous steps in this wiki. Confirm Steam launches and logs into your account, then do this:

If you have trouble starting Steam after symlinking the entire Steam folder, try linking only the steamapps subdirectory in your existing wine steam folder instead.

If you still have trouble starting games, use # mount --bind /path/to/SteamApps ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps -ouser=your-user-name , this is the only thing that worked for me with TF2.

Running Steam in a second X server

Assuming you are using the script above to start Steam, make a new script, called x.steam.sh. You should run this when you want to start Steam in a new X server, and steam.sh if you want Steam to start in the current X server.

If due to misconfiguration a black screen is shown, you could always close down the second X server by pressing Template:Keypress.

Because the second X server is only running the game and the first X server with all your programs is backgrounded, performance should increase. In addition, it is much more convenient to switch X servers while in game to access other resources, rather than having to exit the game completely or Template:Keypress out. Finally, it is useful for when Steam or WINE goes haywire and leaves a bunch of processes in memory after Steam crashes. Simply Template:Keypress on the second X server to kill that X and all processes on that desktop will terminate as well.

If you get errors that look like "Xlib: connection to ":1.0" refused by server" when starting the second X: You will need to adjust your X permissions.

If you lose the ability to use the keyboard while using Steam: This is an odd bug that does not happen with other games. A solution is to use a WM in the second X as well. Thankfully, you do not need to run a large WM. Openbox and icewm have been confirmed to fix this bug (evilwm, pekwm, lwm do not work), but the icewm taskbar shows up on the bottom of the game, thus it's recommended to use Openbox. Install openbox from the official repositories, then add openbox & to the top of your steam.sh file. Note you can run other programs (ex. Teamspeak &) or set X settings (ex. xset, xmodmap) before the WINE call as well.

Steam links in Firefox, Chrome, etc

To make steam:// urls in your browser connect with Steam in Wine, there are several things you can do. One involves making steam url-handler keys in gconf, another involves making protocol files for KDE, others involve tinkering with desktop files or the Local State file for chromium. These seem to only work in firefox or under certain desktop configurations. One way to do it that works more globally is using mimeo, a tool made by Xyne (an Arch TU) which follows. For another working and less invasive (but firefox-only) way, see the first post here .

Restart the browser and you should be good to go. In Chromium, you cannot enter a steam:// link in the url box like you can with Firefox. The forum link above has a steam://open/friends link to try if needed.

Note:

If you have any problems with file associations after doing this, simply revert to regular xdg-utils and undo your changes to /usr/bin/xdg-open.

Those on other distributions that stumble upon this page, see the link above for firefox specific instructions. No easy way to get it working on Chromium on other distros exists.

No text rendered problem

If there is no text/font rendered when starting steam you should try to start steam with the parameter -no-dwrite. Read more in the forum thread about it.